U.S. Pat. Nos. 6,028,599 and 6,341,195 describe an electronic program guide and its data base system; U.S. Pat. No. 6,088,722 describes a personalized TV program selection system. Although these patents relate to an electronic program guide and program selection systems, the purpose of those system are all for watching pre-selected and recorded program at later time, while never touch the subject of the present invention. U.S. Pat. No. 6,058,417 describes a subscriber to subscriber electronic trading system on the internet, and U.S. Pat. No. 6,226,675 described a corporate group to corporate group electronic online trading system. These systems are all set up for conventional physical goods trading, there is not yet a real or delayed or relayed time trading system for trading electronic information items, such as TV programs, media, and information products.
Currently, electronic information (such as TV programs) items are provided by information content providers to information content network operators, who assemble the information content by channels and sell to subscribers on a monthly subscription basis. A content provider can sell its own content to many content network operators; a content network operator can have its own mass subscriber base in a region, but content providers in most cases do not have a real time supply relationship with the subscribers associated with a content network operator; due to limitation of territory, the network operator only provides monthly service to its subscribers within its own network area. Subscribers who pay the monthly subscription fee are provided with the subscribed content (such as TV programs) which is typically composed of several hundred channels; and in certain time frames (such as several days or certain day) the subscriber may only use a portion of the content (such as only watch several or tens of channels), the content for the rest of the time (or rest of channels) are wasted. In other cases, due to the internet technology development, if a content provider provides content directly to world wide subscribers via internet by the method of streaming SVOD (Subscription Video on Demand), though the quality is still in question, it breaks the area limitation of regional network's operation and some even bypass the network operation. Similarly, a satellite direct broadcast network operator is not restricted by terrestrial limitations. Both SVOD providers and satellite direct broadcast network operators all encounter the limitation of various nations' government administration policy and media import and export control as well as content usage when their content is delivered to these controlled areas. Since one subscriber can only use one or several channels of media at time, while they own the access right to the content network operator's authorized media pool, which may contains hundreds or thousands of titles or channels of information or media. When the subscriber only uses certain number of titles or channels of media in certain time, the rest of the title or media within or beyond the specified time shall be idle or wasted.